1. Field of the Invention
A grip for a sporting implement is made from a compression molding process wherein an injection molded rubber underlisting is positioned in a compression mold and other grip components of rubber material are laid thereacross and around so that the components can be compression molded and vulcanized to the underlying underlisting.
2. Description of Relevant Art
Grips for sporting implements have taken numerous forms for many years with early grips for golf clubs, tennis rackets and the like simply consisting of a wrap of material, such as leather, in a helical or spiral pattern around a handle portion of the sporting implement. In recent years, the leather material has been replaced in some circumstances with polyurethane and rather then wrapping the polyurethane or leather strip of material directly onto the handle portion of the sporting implement, sometimes an elastomeric tubular underlisting is first mounted on the handle portion of the implement so the strip leather or polyurethane material can be wrapped onto the underlisting.
In the sport of golf, grips have evolved from the wrap type grip described above to vulcanized rubber sleeves that are simply slipped over the butt end of the golf club. Such grips are still in use and typically made of one uniform rubber material. To improve the frictional gripping quality of the grip for the user of the club, a pattern is frequently molded into the outer surface of the grip. Since the grip on a golf club and other sporting implements must have a desired degree of torsional resistance, the rubber material from which the grips are made must be relatively hard which is sometimes undesirable from the aspect of obtaining the desired friction between the grip and the user's hands. Further, hard rubber materials tend to become harder and slippery over time and with repeated use.
Accordingly, grips made of more than one rubber material or even thermoplastic materials have recently come into existence. An example of such a grip is disclosed in copending application Ser. No. 09/779,029 entitled “Grip For Sporting Implement” which is of common ownership with the present application. In the pending application, an underlisting of a relatively hard rubber material is provided with a recess in its outer surface in which a tubular sleeve of a softer material is positioned. This combination provides the torsional resistant base desired for the grip with a relatively soft rubber gripping surface desired by some users.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,090,999 to Karns, U.S. Pat. No. 5,322,290 to Minami and U.S. Pat. No. 5,261,665 to Downey are other illustrations of grips having multiple layers of material with the layers being made of materials of varying hardness.
It is also known in the art to mold one layer of material onto another layer of material in a grip for a sporting implement with the aforenoted Downey patent being an example of such. In the grip disclosed in the Downey patent, an inner socket is formed of a thermoplastic material and an outer jacket is also formed of a thermoplastic material with the outer jacket being injection molded onto the inner socket. Thermoplastic materials are not always desirable for grips, however, and rubber materials are difficult if not impossible to injection mold to each other.
Accordingly, while it is desirable in many instances to have a grip formed from materials of varying hardness, it is difficult to mold such materials together if they are rubber as opposed to thermoplastic in nature.
It is to overcome the shortcomings of the prior art and to provide a new grip and method of making the grip in a molding process that the present invention has been developed.